Biosecurity measures prevent infectious disease entering livestock populations. Effective biosecurity is both welfare-positive and economically essential for sustainable livestock production.
Disease biosecurity is directly linked to livestock welfare through two pathways: preventing disease prevents the suffering caused by infection, and preventing disease outbreaks prevents the welfare harm of mass culling responses. African swine fever, which has killed or required culling of hundreds of millions of pigs across Asia and Europe, causes suffering through both infection and through the culling protocols required to contain spread. Basic biosecurity measures — cleaning vehicles, controlling visitor access, sourcing animals from disease-free sources, and disease monitoring — are among the most cost-effective welfare and production interventions available. Biosecurity failures that allow disease entry cause welfare harm at scale that makes prevention clearly preferable.